Benefit Strategies Group Inc v Prider [2005] SASC 194

Facts: A court in California had awarded five-fold punitive damages (akin to exemplary damages in Australia) to Pl, who sought to enforce this judgment in South Australia. The Court raised the prospect that the foreign judgment for a five-fold judgment may be contrary to public policy. 

Issue: Whether an Australian court will enforce an award of punitive/exemplary damages made by a foreign court? 

Held: Australian lawyers are familiar with the award of exemplary damages that can be far more than 5 times the compensatory damages. Simply because a foreign court ordered multiple damages does not mean it is contrary to forum public policy. It did not fall into a penal type of damages that an Australian court would not enforce.

Held (Bleby J): “The judgment sought to be enforced in this case, although described as ‘punitive damages’, was a judgment in respect of a private right for his ‘brazen and fraudulent conduct’. There was no public element in the remedy being sought. In my view, it did not fall within the type of judgment which this Court would refuse to enforce on public policy grounds relating to the non-enforcement of foreign penal or revenue laws.”